


Story Less than Told

by romanticalgirl



Series: behind the song [13]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 12:10:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My back was turned, I did not see.</p><p>Based on the Jason Isbell song "Chicago Promenade".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Story Less than Told

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 1-21-08

The apartment is empty except for a single box of things he doesn’t have a use for anymore and things that he’s not sure exactly what they are or what they do. He’s sure his mother gave them to him, to them, but without someone to tell him, he’s completely at a loss.

The city keeps moving on without him, he can see it in the snow falling and the eerie lights that reflect off of it, the sound of the train and the cars on the street below. He leans against the cold glass and watches the world in white and metal and wonders when it stopped and how. Wonders how things fell apart when he wasn’t looking or if he was watching when they did, and he just didn’t see.

He knows it was easy before. Friends and lovers moving in the small circle between apartments, laughing and drinking, watching movies and listening to music, going to parties and dinners and out for drinks. There was dancing once or twice and television, dramas and comedies and football on Sundays, and it all worked out well enough until it didn’t.

The trick, of course, is that everyone wants different things and sees different things, and there’s no right or wrong or in-between, just different, but they feel wrong when you want someone and something and it’s not the same for them. Hearts get put out there and broken, smashed to pieces when you’re not even trying, trampled in the fallout and bruised in places they can’t quite heal.

He woke up to find the apartment empty, except for the empty bottles and confetti, remnants of a party that no one enjoyed, where the celebration was muted by arguments and words that couldn’t be unspoken once they tasted air. Things fell apart and exploded, and there’s nothing more than broken glass and spilled champagne to show for it. The bed is as empty as the rest of the house, and her drawers are open and vacant. There’s a check on the dresser and the memo reads ‘for services rendered’ in her shaky scrawl, and he wonders where she is now, wonders how it got so bad he didn’t even notice her walking out the door.

He tried the phone and no one answered, so whatever got done hit them all so hard that it shattered the threads that held the group of them together, mixed up and messed up like something on the television, fixed in an hour or two worth of drama minus the commercials, but this aches so it has to be real. There’s no one to talk to, and he wonders if the bridges he’s burned are still on fire or if they’re just smoldering ashes that don’t keep anyone warm anymore.

He tears up the check and tosses the pieces in a bowl, letting them burn down to nothing but bits of gray ash against the flowers painted on the ceramic. It’s the least he can do, maybe the only thing, and it’s nothing much at all. He’s pretty sure that sacrifice has to have witnesses, and there’s no one around to see. He leaves the box sitting on the floor by the window. He kicks a chair and watches it skitter across the floor, topple over and lie there like a corpse. Sighing, he locks the door behind him and leaves it behind like everyone else did, tugging his coat close against the bitter cold air.

The bar down the street is noisy, and the heat of the people and the excitement at whatever’s happening on the many TV screens buffets him, warding off whatever chill he brought in with him. He orders up a beer and sips it at the crowded bar, jostled by armchair jocks yelling at the idiots on the screen, making fools of themselves over dreams they never quite gave up, even when they didn’t have a chance in hell. 

He sees her across the room, face pale and cheeks splotched red from tears. He knows the sight of her crying, has helped her through it and caused it in equal measure, and he knows that whatever he did is what did it this time. She doesn’t see him, and their friends gather around her like a phalanx, and he knows that they’re not their friends anymore, but hers. 

It’s all a vague blur of too much whiskey and rumors whispered when he wasn’t supposed to be around, but he wonders now if maybe it was said for his benefit, to make it all fall apart, to make this the fallout. He drains his beer and walks over, feeling the tension inside him ratchet up as eyes turn toward him, and whatever peace she’s found since she walked out on him shatters.

Someone tells him to get the hell away, and someone else scoots closer to her and wraps an arm around her. He stops far enough back that he’s not crowding any of them, and she’s watching him with eyes that hurt more than the slivers of broken glass that slipped under his skin on New Year’s Day. He doesn’t know what to say or how to say any of it, words frozen just like the snow outside, and in the distance a car turns over and an exhaust backfires and the crowd around the bar cheers as someone scores something he’ll never understand.

He doesn’t say a word, just nods to her and she nods back, barely tilting her head, but it’s enough. Maybe he’s not the one who owes someone an apology or maybe he is, but words aren’t going to make it right, aren’t going to make anything better. All that matters is this, a moment of silence after too many words that offers apology and forgiveness and hope for another time. Or maybe it’s never and he’ll learn to live with that. 

He walks over and kisses her once, closing his eyes and tasting her one last time. He pulls his hand from his pocket and strokes her cheek, the gray ash from the check leaving his mark on her damp skin.


End file.
